Lunch Today: Soups at Nyonya

With the arrival of fall and the occasional chilly, gloomy day, we've been looking for 1) warming, soothing lunch options that 2) don't make us stray far from our office. So the soups at Nyonya, right downstairs, start sounding pretty appealing.

Our favorite? The curry mee ($6.95) pictured above. The rich coconut milk broth, fragrant with chilies and lemongrass, is good enough to slurp down on its own. But the broth is just the first stage in this sort of Malaysian soup, of course. The bowl fills to the top with egg noodles, fish-stuffed peppers, and tofu puffs that drink in the orange broth. With just a little hint of heat, it's an eminently satisfying lunch—it's not actually on their lunch special list, but it doesn't need to be; $7 for a bowl of rich soup this size is a lunch deal whatever it's called.

The asam laksa ($6.95) is just what that soup should be—sour, a little spicy, and fishy as hell—so if you're down with that funky-tart kind of thing (and I usually am), it delivers. But it doesn't have quite the same rib-sticking satisfaction.